1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of communications, and in particular, to an autonomous multi-services card that connects to a host computer and a telephone device to a communications network.
2. Statement of the Problem
A network interface card fits into the slot of a host computer. The network interface card allows the host computer to communicate with a communications network. Typically, the host computer provides control input to the network interface card. Unfortunately, communications performance is adversely affected by using the host computer to control the network interface card.
The host computer typically executes an operating system and a variety of software applications. Thus, host computer processing time is shared across multiple software components. Communications performance suffers as a result because the host computer may not provide control input to network interface card in a timely manner. Since many forms of communication are real-time in nature, such as a telephone conversation, the lack of timely host computer control can severely disrupt communications. In addition one of the software applications may cause the host computer to crash, so that no control input is provided to the network interface card. In this case, communications would cease altogether.